A data center room consists of an enclosed area where many computer systems such as servers, databases, and power supplies are located. Design of a data center room often requires both access to and from the computer systems, and incorporation of one or more ways to control the temperature within the data center room. Elevated air temperatures within the data center room may adversely affect a computer system's reliability, and may result in systems shutting down.
The computer systems are often physically mounted in racks in a data center room. Multiple rows of racks may be arranged in a data center room, so long as the layout allows for access, typically through an aisle, to both the front and back of each rack. The aisle is referred to as a cold aisle, because in addition to providing access to the computer systems, the cold aisle is the area where cooling air is dispersed in order to cool the computer systems.
A typical air cooling system for a data center room consists of an air intake area, an air cooling unit, and a cooling air passageway leading to the vicinity of the racks. Air from the data center room is drawn into the air intake area and directed to the air cooling unit (e.g., an air conditioning device). The air cooling unit cools the air and then directs the cooled air into the cooling air passageway, generally comprising an area under the floor of the data center room. The cooling air is dispersed from the cooling air passageway to the racks by passing through perforations in the floor. These perforations are located throughout the data center room, including the cold aisles. Once the cooling air is dispersed, it is free to circulate in the area of the racks.
For compliance with fire safety codes, the racks and the cold aisles are often arranged to allow efficient and safe access through the cold aisles by persons in the room. In this case neither end of a cold aisle is permanently obstructed. This generally requires a layout of cold aisles where the ends of the aisles are free of permanent obstructions, such as a wall.
One problem with current data center designs is that the cooling air, once released, circulates based on the air pressures and air currents within the data center room. In some instances, instead of flowing up to all the computer systems in the racks, the air may flow down one or more of the cold aisles and out of an open end of a cold aisle, returning directly to the air intake of the cooling unit. In this instance, the cooling air may never reach the computer systems it was intended to cool, and the computer systems may draw heated air into their own cooling systems, thereby increasing the danger of overheating, leading to reduced reliability, or a shutdown of the computer systems. That is, heated air exhausted by or radiated from one computer system in the rack is re-circulated back into the same or other computer systems in the rack. The heated air traveling back towards the air intake of the cooling unit may re-circulate back to the computer systems by re-entering a cold aisle through one of the aisles.
In addition, the air cooling unit, which has a fixed capacity to circulate a volume of air, is receiving and processing cooled air, which displaces the heated air in the data center room, and prevents the heated air from being cooled by the air cooling unit. This reduces efficiency of the cooling system for the data center room, and adds to the cost of cooling the data center room, either by requiring sizing of an air cooling unit with an over capacity for volume or by requiring a properly sized air cooling unit to run more often or continuously.